Big Dumb Beautiful Fragile Idiots

A loaded sentence...he was talking about horses

Quick mahalo to all my readers, old and new, for being here with me again. If you have not yet subscribed to receive my essays weekly by email, you can just enter your email address here:

Speaking of my subscribers, about half of you came here via my friend Matthew Ferrara, writer of Always Inspiring, and that likely means you are in the real estate industry. When I finished my year of writing memoir, Matthew was one of the voices encouraging me to just experiment to find what I was called to write next. With todayʻs installment I will begin a series of essays that was on my list of possibilities - things I have learned from horses. For my real estate readers in particular, if you are about to tune out as this being not relevant, I would like to mention that you are in a relationship business, needing to connect and attune with others, read body language and energy - and horses have a lot to teach us about that.

For all of us - learning about communication in relationships, healing and trauma, leadership, being a good ally - these are some of the topics ahead.

Me with a Paso Fino horse clearly interested in luxury real estate listings. Smart cookie. Then I hopped on and we filmed a video of an equestrian listings.

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I read a number of other writers on the Substack platform, some famous or relatively so, some just compellingly good writers. (If you are reading from an email rather than the website or app, you can find the writers I read and recommend by clicking here. ) One of the better known of the writers I read just published an essay with a title about learning from a woman who loves horses. Two of my favorite topics: horses and intuitive, accomplished horse people. It turned out to be not an easy read however. The territory explored in the piece is collective willingness to dehumanize “others” - whether human or horse - in this case as exemplified in a particular film and more broadly within the film industry. The reader comments were for the most part contributing richness to the exploration. And then there was the one that triggered me. The one describing horses as Big Dumb Beautiful Fragile Idiots.

I replied to the comment saying that my own experience was quite different, and in fact I had become certified in Equine Guided Education precisely because the wisdom of horses interacting with people as coaches and teachers can be so life changing. His response to my response was that if I owned a horse rather than occasionally riding other peopleʻs horses my views would change. Huh? I had just mentioned my horses.

It got worse from there. I quickly realized why his horses are “dumb”- in the sense of silent or mute. The man was so full of his assumptions, and clearly always (in his own ungrounded self-assessment) the smartest person in the room, that he was could not grasp anything I was saying. Nor had he become at all curious about what Equine Guided Education was, because he might have looked it up before making incorrect comments based on his assumption of what it might be. Since there was no chance of him listening to me and hearing anything I might have to say, I just shut up.

Horses are great mirrors. When someone behaves as an idiot, most horses also simply choose to become “dumb.”

With no apology, just acknowledgement that I have no intention to stereotype those of my readers who are intelligent accomplished white men with graduate degrees, let me just say even before clicking on this personʻs profile I had already guessed that much about him. Ironic, because he was reading and commenting on the writing of someone known for books and films that help those of us of dominant culture get insight into more relational, indigenous ways of being and viewing the world - and his original comment and subsequent responses to me showed he was missing the point altogether. Why was he even there?

Before I entirely left the conversation, I did thank him, with sincerity, for being the messenger who made clear what my next topic here would be.

Over the coming weeks I will write more about my background with horses. Like how I began to perceive that a horse who was nominally being “used” by an instructor to teach me riding skills would infallibly give me the same messages I was hearing in other parts of my life.

A strong theme in the memoir I wrote about the transformational journey I began in my mid-30s was my seemingly predestined encounters with superb human teachers. It was in that context that I wrote the essay about horses as my other lifelong teachers and mentors. Going forward I will write about some of the specific lessons from horses that I often share when mentoring others or simply approaching my own life challenges.

But today, letʻs stick with my interaction with Mr. Smart. I have no idea whether he thought of me as big (not likely) or fragile (quite possibly). I truly donʻt care whether or not that human would find me beautiful. But the subtext was that if I did not realize that horses are idiots, than clearly I was also a dumb idiot.

So how should we respond when someone else is not listening, or when they have fixed, negative assessments of us with no grounding for them? Horses have a lot to teach us on those topics alone. But what comes to mind is another friend who taught me an important response, one of the arrows in my conversational quiver. It happened when I introduced one of the men I dated in 1993 to Paulo Coelho, who was using my Manhattan apartment as his home base during the year The Alchemist was published in the U.S. We were having lunch at a restaurant in the West Village. My date asked Paulo to teach him one of the esoteric practices heʻd read about in one of Pauloʻs books. Paulo immediately agreed. And then my date changed the subject.

As this man continued to opine on his new topic, Paulo leaned over to me and said, “I could see he was not actually committed to learning what he asked. I agreed just so I could teach you something. Share your knowledge freely, but when someone shows they are not listening, that they are not ready to hear what you have to teach, it is necessary to just save your breath for when it can make a difference.” This piece of advice is one that has saved me from tar-baby interactions dozens if not hundreds of times over the past thirty years.

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Horses know this too. Both humans and horses will often choose to be silent when they know they have no chance of being heard and understood. I have watched the light go out in my mareʻs eye as if connected to a dimmer switch as a “trainer” put a bit in her mouth. I have watched this same mare reach for the bridle willingly once we had months of “conversation” through which she was allowed to regain her sense of dignity and agency. The exact same thing happens with employees, students, any category of humans (think gender or ethnicity) when it is either unsafe or futile to share their thoughts and feelings.

Horses become “dumb,” shut down, as a survival tactic. There are so many levels of abuse possible in a situation where one participant has the privilege and means of domination. That was the point of the essay that prompted this one, the story of the author as a student sitting in a college film class, the only brown-skinned student, watching his fellow students respond with more empathy to the killing of a horse than to the extermination of people who looked just like him.

Good came of this unsettling exchange of comments, and my subsequently reflecting further on the essay and the incident for you. I realized that as horrifying as it is that a room full of students would have more empathy for a horse (“dumb animal”) than for humans being massacred, maybe thatʻs where horses can help the blind to see. The very ability horses have to draw out empathy and feelings of connection is what makes me think they can help teach humans how our thoughts, assumptions, beliefs and behaviors can traumatize those we “other.” Maybe the horses can do it, when other humans and their endless “diversity equity and inclusion” trainings cannot. It gives me more momentum and inspiration for the work I do in Equine Guided Education.

And more momentum and inspiration for what I might be able to share here, for why They Keep Telling Me I Should Write…